girl eat machine

A public thinkspace for L(e), lover of analog, digital, and interdimensional.

[girleatmachine]

and then you meet her eyes in a photograph and have to remember all over again that she’s gone.

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i wonder if i will look upon my loneliness and find it foreign

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Possession. #latergram #arttherapy #identitycrisis #anxietystudies #selfie #bodyart #painter #painting #mccannic #sabbaticelle #selflove #selfhate

[andiate]

Make the invisible visible and maybe you can overcome it.

[girleatmachine]

I am getting a new project off the ground to share my self/other portraiture. Not fully together yet, but if you want to follow along, check out the ever-budding “...and I ate”.

Take your feels, put them into your body, then pour them out on the Internet, that’s what I always say. :-*

[andiate]

Triumph

Photobooth at Galentine’s Day 2016. Washington, DC.

[tysavestheworld]

Disrupting History the paintings of Titus Kaphar

[girleatmachine]

For Christmas, I’d like

an America that understands that terrorism is shooting up abortion clinics

an America that understands that if you don’t teach or provide birth control, you secure the need for abortion as an option

an America that understands that even with ethical gray space, abortion must be available to all who need or want it

an America that understands gray space

critical theory taught as part of common core public education

some glue sticks so I can make more collage shit

hmm. i’ll have to keep working on my list.

[girleatmachine]

omfg

i’m awake.

i’m awake for the first time in years.

glory. now: let’s see what we can do.

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goddamn do panic attacks fry a person out.

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New Year

It’s new years for me. My new years. Just over a year ago today I lay in this very apartment (if not this very bed), living in the present tense of a New Life.

The year that followed has been extraordinar...i...ly...difficult. So very difficult. So very, very much has happened: good, bad, beautiful, horrid, otherwise. I mean, a lot happens to all of us, each and every one, in the course of our lives, our years, our days, this I truly believe.....but for me and my life, me and my days, well, this shit has been something else.

I have often thought that one year out wouldn’t be a good enough vantage point for reflection on WTF just happened -- WTF was this year. I have often thought that I’ll need to be 2 or 3 years (5? 10?) away to see and understand what This Year was and who I am because of it. But the thing about life is that you live it. Choices are few, and infrequent, and fickle. And so here I am, just 1 year out, incapable of stopping myself from Accounting and shouting into the void the only words I can find to describe the whole thing:

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

What the fuck. What the fuck. (Sylvia Path: “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”)

I am.

A year. What can happen in a year? For me:

115+ poems written

1 addiction (smoking) rekindled -- and extinguished

1 book published

1 father saved by modern medicine

1 marriage ended (mine)

1 cardboard dinosaur built

2 parade krewes organized

1 spaceship landed

4 parades added to my list

Something like 29 - 32 cities and towns visited or inhabited, to varying degrees, including 2 outside the US

7 bags of broccoli frozen before they could rot

8 Homes occupied

9: the number of times I was forced to replace debit and/or credit cards because of fraud

1 motherfucking brain injury

2 talks/trips cancelled because of brain injury

3 plays

Innumerable paintings and drawings created

1 morning dance party attended (today)

2 therapists

1 highway shutdown

First conversation of my entire life with my parents about race

First DDOS attack (received, #gamergate)

3 important evenings spent dancing in my parents’ basement with them, cold feet slapping the rug in front of the wood burning stove, laughing until we cried

2 vacations after 2 years with no vacation

3 eldercare homes for my grandmother and ~3 brain surgeries for her, too

Fell in love again (and again)

Discovered self-love

Started an international conversation about the future & present of my field

Hollered 6 punk rock songs into 3 punk rock mics at Punk Rock Karaoke

Started dating again

Came out (again)

Wrote a lot for work

Jumped off a wharf into the ocean

Kayaked with a harbor seal

Made promises I couldn’t keep

Missed opportunities

Took chances

Did not take enough chances?

Invested in friendships

Starting rock climbing

Kept running

Got hella into comix

Held my first housewarming

Bought a glitter purple bike

Patched my first flat

Dyed my hair

Perspired

Despaired

Swung my feet from my balcony during a rainstorm

Got loud

Got fierce

Got tired

Got...me

....here. Back to Neverland. Back into this moment.

I could write the rant above a hundred ways a hundred times, zooming in and out of detail, adding, subtracting, playing chicken with honesty and exposure (*wink*), breaking down and rolling up an infinite series of actions and thoughts and memories into bite-sized, chewable pieces for you/me strangers to eat. Instead I decided to write the parts I needed to write, to shout what I needed to shout.

It’s not everything, nowhere near a complete picture of what happened and who it happened to and what it was like and so on...But, just the snip that I need: a tiny little public marker -- a monument to not being crazy. A totem that says, yes, it all happened. All of it. And more.

So, this new years confessional: Bless me, me, for I have sinned. It’s been a lifetime since I took stock of my own humanity. I hope you’ll accept this token of vulnerability in exchange for the strength to see me through.

I don’t know what this next year will be like, but I am ready for it.

I am.

[girleatmachine]

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻  as a lifestyle choice

[girleatmachine]

in a democracy, you’re not serving users

you’re serving citizens -- you’re serving people

users respond to what you create

democracy is something citizens create

the agency matters

[girleatmachine]

I value art that lets me be a specter/spectator in lives I’ve lived.

This is, I think, one of only two pieces of art that I’ve encountered that capture what high school felt like without having been part of that experience. Listening for the millionth time with the newautumn chill and the smell of candles burning: Transported.

[girleatmachine]

strong enough to be weak

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“what if you are just different now?”

one of the hardest things to grapple with post-injury. 

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how much of your life do you need to live before you’re _______________ (age)

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Today I did a backbend. I’ve never done a backbend before. Ever. Not once (before this once), in my entire life, have I found a way to stand, sunny-side up, both feet and hands planted on the ground.

What a curious type of newness. Less of an Accomplishment and more of a Discovery. The feeling you get finding yourself fluent after months of language study. Or the tickle that crawls up your shoulders and into your toes when you eat up a big NASA picture of space. 

(Or maybe just the calm disarm of the nights when you feel alone until some unseen cloud breaks and the moon pounces down on you and catches you in her net of light. Or the sight of a friend you want to see across the street while out and about on the weekend. Or that vibe of your favorite song, heard anywhere, anytime.)

Close encounters with The Knowing. Trailblazing your own neighborhood in a fog.

The first time I tried to bend back was after I learned it was A Thing. I lay on the floor, shoved my hips in the air, crinkled my fingers, twitched my elbows, and... strain, strain: Ugh. 

Not strong enough. Not strong enough. 

Later, stronger, I tried again. We’re talking, like, 5-plus years ago now. A sudden inspiration to bend. To lift up and bend. Down to the floor I went and...struggling and straining, discovered that my body was a puzzle I could not solve. 

Still not strong enough. Still not strong enough.

I lay on the floor, a crumpled spider, all elbows and knees and frowns, embarrassed by my defeat. No, but really how do people do this? Maybe I just can’t? Am I....too fat, too weak, too late? ...not built for it, doing something wrong? (A judicial activist, my anxiety.)

This year, motivated by a combination of hunger (for exercise), depression, and concussion, I got into yoga. It only took a handful classes before teachers began to invite us into the Wheel pose--the backbend.

The first time, I straight up skipped it, chilling in Child’s Pose or whatever alternate teacher provided. Noo need to fuck with that. More recently, I decided to make some half-hearted attempts, hanging out in Crumpled Spider, frowning and sort of half-pushing, half just...laying, until I couldn’t take it any more.  

I wonder what was different about tonight. I strained like usual, flopping my elbows and knees around, messing with my neck and the crown of my head to no avail. I was just telling myself, lovingly, that it’s okay that I can’t do it (maybe one day; we’ll train for it; we’re...maybe getting stronger? (along with some hatetalk, let’s not kid ourselves)), when it happened. Actually, technically, it happened the very moment I sent a message to the muscles to lower us down. 

Pop! 

It took me a moment to understand. 

There I was, not down, but very, very up: arms locked, body aloft. Back bent.

I shifted a hand. Still up and strong.

Strong.

What a fucking high. I let a shit-eating grin creep across my face and stay until the end of class.

//

I did a backbend today. An Impossible Thing. And I even did another one when I got home, just because I could.

With any luck, now that I Know, I’ll do a third one in the morning. 

Just because.